Page 621 - Escape Velocity

Author Notes:

Many times it's not even a lucky (or unlucky) roll that breaks physics and reality, but a bit of inspired thinking from the players. Sometimes the shared imagined universe we play in would be a lesser one if it didn't happen, and we just gotta let it play out.

After a rough two weeks of having to put it aside, the merch/t-shirts idea is back on the table. I'm a bit more informed via research about the print-on-demand services I intend to use, though this is still very new to me. Any advice at this stage from both customers and users is very much welcome.

And a quick reminder that quest guest comics are still casually open around here until page 630.

40 Comments:

I once hacked a Russian forestry satellite and deoribitted it into a dock in Siberia using LITERALLY a cellphone and a bubble gum wrapper... Getting the signal to even reach orbit via Baikonur was a little tricky...

One of my earliest inspired moments was in D&D, fighting off a group of Wall Masters. As the party tank, I had the wizard cast Protection from Fire on me, had the rogue then set me on fire, and then I proceeded to get into grappling fights with the Wall Masters. Classic.

I've been thinking about coming up with a new type of enemy.
Already got an idea for it's power, but can't come up with anything else.
It takes the memory of a physical pain, and forces you you to remember it.
For example, if you got hurt um down, it can make you feel it again an excusing details.
I still need to come up a name, looks, how to resist it, weaknesses, and how to balance it when my players new or strong enough for it to be an uncommon foe.
You guys helped me the mage. Maybe you can help me again.

The only thing that comes to mind with "hydraulics" is the old tv show "Junkyard Wars." Where the moral of the story, if there is one, is *NEVER* use hydraulics to win a challenge. Secondhand junk parts relying on good hoses, reliable pressure and a dependable pressure system *ain't gonna happen!*

They tend to be when ponies are involved. Real-world horses and ponies usually can't navigate stairs down, but Equestria ponies can. Only way to explain how The Great & Powerful Trixie could get around human office buildings without taking the elevator.

The other odd thing with Trixie were her hooves. We were using the GURPS system and I modeled her hooves after the disadvantage 'Ham Fisted' instead of the more realistic 'No Fine Manipulators'. So she could use tools and small objects with her hooves, much to the befuddlement of many humans.

There was this one time i was playing as a skeleton race, and I had a once a day racial ability to cause things I touched to be consumed by fear and flee for a few turns. well, we were in a futuristic zoo/animalpreserve with rare creatures from all around of universe gathered from across time and space.
well my party and I were ripped from our homes as the newest "exibits".
During the havok we raised fighting the robot staff i played dead being a skeleton while my party retreated. the robots took me for a dead body and were bring me to the incinrator for disposal, well when we got there, I used my touch of fear causing the emotionless robots to sudeenly feel soul crushing fear and in order to escape they jumped right into the incinrator.

I remember a time when cartoon physics kicked in for a murder my brother tried to accomplish, where he tried drop several heavy objects on this really oblivious guy. He missed by a little less then 5 every single time. It wasn't until he dropped his last item, classic potted plant, that he not only hit, but critically hit him with maximum falling damage as well. It was almost as if the deity of Derp was watching him.

*sigh* I so wish I had stories for story time. :( Yesterday I had a huge nervous breakdown about how difficult it is to be a DM. I must be doing it wrong, because it's supposed to be fun. And players are supposed to take their own initiative. My group is full of really smart people who roleplay religiously (not in the gaming sense, just pure storytelling) and no matter what I do, every time I yield the floor to them they're utterly confused as to what they're supposed to do. I'm *definitely* doing something wrong.

That sounds to me like you need to talk to your players about what the theme of your particular game is and what everyone is expecting.

If the game your running is going to be really free form your players need to know that. They need to know that you want them to make stuff up and do a bunch of story telling on their own without prompting.

Some groups don't want to take the kind of initiative that you are expecting because that's not what they come to the game for. Others may not even realize that it's something that a GM wants them to do.

The best way to deal with that is to talk to your players, either one on one or the whole group, about what kind of roll playing everyone wants and expects.

What i think is the best way to go about it is starting with a quest entirely ruled by you, so the players have time to find the Char's personalities because they might all have long back stories but they haven't really been "alive" yet.

That's what I did. They don't know what they're supposed to do even then. I feel like I've explained and explained and explained the world and their circumstances, but it's never enough to get them to understand what they can do to make things happen.

And if I tell them flat-out that they should go up the northern road and track the monsters back to their lair, and they just do that, well... then there's no reason for them to even be there, I might as well be writing a book instead of running a game.

In a way, I've been given a gift. The story never deviates from my plan. But that's because the players can never seem to handle having more than one option. I just don't get it, I've seen them roleplay, they're so good at it, what am *I* doing wrong?

Have you tried giving them a binary, closed concept choice that would have an effect on the game world? Like, say, having an NPC offer them two quests and making them choose, or having to choose which group to support in a conflict/election/war?

Also, in the off chance that you haven't; large, non-linear dungeons are great for encouraging player initiative (lol, no pun intended) especially if your player are new to this whole RPG thing. Just make sure your players are expecting to have to explore, or they will get frustrated at not being able to find the "end". I learned that one the hard way

Speaking of Mario and the improbable, I once rolled to dodge a heavy anti-armor rifle fired by a mechanical battlesuit.
While piloting a ≥320 ton, 14 meter long tank.
And passed my Dodge roll. GM ruled that I made the tank do a short Mario Kart-style hop right over the top of the projectile and stuck the landing.